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Articles

Dietary Trans Fatty Acids Combined with a Marginal Essential Fatty Acid Status during the Pre- and Postnatal Periods Do Not Affect Growth or Brain Fatty Acids but May Alter Behavioral Development in B6D2F₂ Mice¹

Department of Health Studies and Gerontology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada N2L 3G1

²To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wainwrig{at}healthy.uwaterloo.ca.

The objective of this study was to investigate whether dietary trans fatty acids (TFA) during the pre- and postnatal periods would exacerbate the effects of marginal essential fatty acid (EFA) status on growth, brain long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) and behavioral development in B6D2F₂ mice. Pregnant B6D2F₁ females were randomly assigned to one of the following three diets: marginal EFA plus 22% trans 18:1 (mEFA + TFA); marginal EFA (mEFA); and control (CON). The total 18:1 content in all diets was similar. The offspring were weaned and maintained on the same diets. Both the mEFA and mEFA + TFA groups had reduced growth and brain weight compared with CON, but did not differ from one another. As expected, the mEFA and mEFA + TFA groups had reduced docosahexaenoic acid [DHA; 22:6(n-3)]) and increased 22:5(n-6) concentrations in brain phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) compared with the CON group, but again did not differ from one another. Reversal learning in the T-water maze was significantly slower in the mEFA + TFA groups compared with the mEFA group and both were slower than the CON group. These findings illustrate that TFA combined with a marginal EFA status do not exacerbate the effects of marginal EFA status on growth or brain LC-PUFA. However, long-term effects of dietary TFA during the pre- and postnatal period on behavioral development and neural function should be investigated in future studies.

KEY WORDS: • dietary trans fatty acids • essential fatty acid status • arachidonic acid • docosahexanoic acid • behavioral development

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